I know he had a padded record.... but even so, even with people padding his record, this is hard to achieve. I mean, other guys with padded records didn´t have that ! Tell me more......
Borderline ATG at LHW imo. 300 fights and only stopped once, by the bigger Max Schmeling. Victories over Maxie Rosenbloom (though who didn't beat slapsie Maxie in non title fights?), Battling Levinksy, Jimmy Slattery, Jimmy Delaney and arguably most impressively, 2 over a green Tommy Loughran, make for a fine resume. He never established himself as the best LHW in the world and his defeats, including to Slattery and Delaney, mean he's borderline ATG at LHW and no more, imo.
He was open and adamant about not fighting black men. For that reason, he can't even be allowed to be ranked.
What is more spectacular about that stoppage is that Stribling never quit and nearly took Schmeling the distance. Young's father threw in the towel some 15 seconds before the final bell.
He fought more than anyone in history of course theres going to be some padding there but theres elite opponents in there as well at both LHW and HW. Whats wild is he broke that record before dying at 28. If he'd had a full career he could have conceivably had like 400 wins. Stribling won the NBA HW title(precursor to the modern WBA) against Tuffy Griffiths. Since he lost the next fight to Schmeling(the champ the NBA had just stripped)his claim is not often recognized.
https://insideandoutsidetheropes.wo...4/william-lawrence-young-stribling-spotlight/ Some of the article is wrong; Jack Dempsey did fight black boxers; I won't go into the whole Wills thing. But Stribling was adamant about not fighting black boxers.
I think he probably is underrated. He complied an incredibly high number of fights for someone so young and faced a lot of the better contenders of his day. Doesn’t seem to get mentioned much either.
